It is well known that casino gaming has developed from a regional activity to a national industry. Revenues have grown dramatically and are generally comprised of two categories: gaming and non-gaming. Today, non-gaming revenues, once an industry after thought have matured and share equal or superior status with gaming revenues in several major companies.
Non-gaming goods and services are diverse and include such items as: hotel inventory, spa services, food and beverage, live entertainment and retail. In a constantly changing industry, these non-gaming goods and services are growing and are integral to a company's continued success. Thus, unlike the past where gaming operators were willing to sell non-gaming goods and services at a loss to promote the company's gaming services, gaming companies now showcase non-gaming goods and services as a profit center just as it promotes its gaming services.
Promotion of these non-gaming services has taken many forms. For example, gift certificates, a long time standard of the retail industry, are a pre-paid piece of paper entitling the named party or bearer to the printed value. Yet another reward program uses co-branded credit cards. In this program, a financial institution issues a credit card which bears a merchant brand. Users are rewarded for retail purchases by tying the use of the reward to merchant loyalty. For example, consumers earn miles for every purchase placed on a credit card co-branded with an airline. The miles are then redeemable for that airline's tickets.
Customer clubs (also known as customer loyalty programs, customer rewards programs, frequent customer programs, or the like) are used by companies to track customer activity and reward customer loyalty with points that can be redeemed for goods or services, discounts, cash-back, or the like. In one form specific to the casino industry, player loyalty programs use player tracking cards that players use when gambling at gaming tables and gaming devices, or making purchases within a casino. These player tracking cards are used to measure a player's “action,” i.e. the amount of gaming activity, and reward the player commensurate with the action measured. It is now well known that player tracking systems can track and reward players across multiple different locations through a linked system.
The disadvantage of any of these methods and systems, however, is that upon redemption, the user has no further inducement to purchase the provider's goods or services because, in effect, the user has used the value available. That is, if a user redeems a gift certificate or frequent flyer miles, the value is exhausted and the user starts again from scratch. After redemption, the user has no greater inducement to purchase further goods and services from the same provider than any other purchaser.
Thus, it can be seen that there is a need in the art for a method and system that builds upon itself by issuing a secondary value when a primary value is redeemed.